Эдмунд Чарльз Бланден (Edmund Charles Blunden)

The Watermill

  I’ll rise at midnight and I’ll rove
  Up the hill and down the drove
    That leads to the old unnoticed mill,
  And think of one I used to love:
  There stooping to the hunching wall
    I’ll stare into the rush of stars
  Or bubbles that the waterfall
    Brings forth and breaks in ceaseless wars.

  The shelving hills have made a fourm
  Where the mill holdings shelter warm,
    And here I came with one I loved
  To watch the seething millions swarm.
  But long ago she grew a ghost
    Though walking with me every day;
  Even when her beauty burned me most
    She to a spectre dimmed away--

  Until though cheeks all morning-bright
  And black eyes gleaming life’s delight
    And singing voice dwelt in my sense,
  Herself paled on my inward sight.
  She grew one whom deep waters glassed.
    Then in dismay I hid from her,
  And lone by talking brooks at last
    I found a Love still lovelier.

  O lost in tortured days of France!
  Yet still the moment comes like chance
    Born in the stirring midnight’s sigh
  Or in the wild wet sunset’s glance:
  And how I know not but this stream
    Still sounds like vision’s voice, and still
  I watch with Love the bubbles gleam,
    I walk with Love beside the mill.

  The heavens are thralled with cloud, yet gray
  Half-moonlight swims the fields till day,
    The stubbled fields, the bleaching woods;--
  Even this bleak hour is stolen away
  By this shy water falling low,
    And calling low the whole night through,
  And calling back the long ago
    And richest world I ever knew.

  The hop-kiln fingers cobweb-white
  With discord dim turned left and right,
    And when the wind was south and small
  The sea’s far whisper drowsed the night;
  Scarce more than mantling ivy’s voice
    That in the tumbling water trailed.
  Love’s spirit called me to rejoice
    When she to nothingness had paled:

  For Love the daffodils shone here
  In grass the greenest of the year,
    Daffodils seemed the sunset lights
  And silver birches budded clear:
  And all from east to west there strode
    Great shafted clouds in argent air,
  The shining chariot-wheels of God,
    And still Love’s moment sees them there.